Dave Clark

I’m delighted to share that following some enjoyable, interesting and thought-provoking discussions, I’ve been invited to join the rapidly expanding S&A Group as their Managing Partner working closely with Darren Croomer their CEO, and an outstanding leadership team to help shape and deliver new services and opportunities, with client growth and innovation as the core focus. Obviously Ai will be in that mix! Having taken time out after stepping away from HiveMind Network at the end of last year, I spent a number of months looking to find someone I could partner with who shares similar perspectives on the future of consulting in a fast changing world, and a desire to shape it for the better, and hence my new role with S&A Group! This alongside S&A’s reputation for decency and integrity made the decision to join the team, an easy one. As well as being one of the UK’s leading challenger consulting organisations, the S&A Group’s sister company, The S&A Academy, has established a formidable reputation in Technology, Data & AI, Science, Engineering and Business training and apprenticeships which provides a wonderfully holistic model for organisations seeking to develop their people. That the role also enables me to continue in developing my thoughts on a better type of social network is a fantastic bonus. To my stalwart connections, I hope you won’t mind me reaching out to many of you over the coming weeks and months to gain your own insight and thoughts on the evolving consulting/expert marketplace in 2025 and how S&A Group can best address this.

Life's short. So having held a whole raft of senior leadership roles usually involving IT, Innovation and Business Change I decided I'd like to support a new way of connecting outstanding people with one another to help change the world of work. I was fortunate enough to be able to engage with the HiveMind Network whilst I was Innovation and Technology Director at Northern Gas. They helped me transform the way the business worked in months not years. So after doing this I joined them as a co-founder and helped shaped, sell and deliver a number of multi-million pound accounts. Stepped away from HiveMind end of 2024 due to differing views on its direction, strategy and leadership

Got the chance to join this award winning company to help further revolutionise the way they did things. So I got the opportunity to put in place all the great things I believed in and went on about when working with Gartner. Doing it for real, with a great board and great colleagues. In under 18 months we implemented an agile adaptive enterprise wide capability - incredible people, incredible company. Recognition at the agile awards for the scale of what we achieved (and it wasn't anything to do with "just" software development!)

As part of Gartner's "EXP division", I had the genuine pleasure of working with senior IT executives all across the UK, helping them apply Gartner best practice research, create peer networks and share/learn from my own mistakes and successes over the last 30 years. In particular liked to think I influenced much of what we did on the topic of "digital" given my background in .com's and startups. Eventually motivated to go back out into the delivery world and do what I kept advising my clients to do on digital transformation.

Joined Gartner Consulting to both build their UK consulting practice and delivering strategies into a variety of clients. Worked with some of the smartest people around, delivered a number of interesting engagements in Energy and Utilities, Public Sector and Transport. Confirmation that great people are what makes a good business.

Joined Sema>SchlumbergerSema>Atos Enjoyed working initially in Systems integration and then Consulting. During my time with the firm I helped shape and deliver two of their flagship programmes with large budgets, lots of people and helped to build AO's revenue stream whilst working with some great clients in a variety of sectors. Along the way became cynical about transformation programmes.

.com start up - went from 20 to 250+ people in around 18 months. Like working on roller coaster, amazing time of optimism and growth. Working with truly entrepreneurial people whilst also giving me an early grounding in the joys of e-commerce and multi-channel strategies.

IT Director at Phones 4U. Possibly one of the most demanding roles in existence. Worked here when headed up by Mr Caudwell himself. Balancing the need to constantly deliver new products and services along with modernising and consolidating an ageing infrastructure, whilst delivering our Y2K programme. Also during the same time implemented EPOS system, re-structured IT function, migrated to new data centre, introduced programme and project management principles, service delivery and governance methods...and managed to stay sane! Probably the most agile, fast moving and somewhat brutal company I've ever worked for in my life.

Responsible for Sourcing Strategy, Supplier Management, Business Process Improvement and Business Architecture. Learning a lot from some of the best senior managers I have ever worked with (before and since).

Joined the Northern practice when the Big Six/Four still had regional practices. Helped to build the IT practice working with the senior management team - sold and delivered transformational work before people had come up with the now overused phrase transformation (sorry to friends that have that word in their title!)

One of the first few people to join PW from a polytechnic, so felt I had much to prove. Actually managed to prove I was competent and capable and became what they called a senior manager at 28. Majority of work was around financial services - with a number of IT strategies along the way

I was of course here when Teeside was still just a common polytechnic rather than an illustrious University!